Chapter 373: Taking Away the Ring
On the quiet borders of the Old Forest, the Withywindle flowed gently down from the streams of the Barrow-downs, passing by a little house ringed with flowers.
Around the house lay a broad, neatly kept lawn and garden. Beyond that, tall trees stood in a ring, trimmed so evenly that they looked like a living wall.
Here lived ever‑merry Tom Bombadil and his wife, Goldberry.
With the Huorns of the Old Forest standing guard, few ever came near Tom's house to disturb him.
Today, however, the little house was lively.
Green fire flared in the hearth, and out of the Floo stepped Kael, Gandalf, and Frodo, one after another.
Sam, Merry and Pippin, who had wanted to come as well, had been firmly left behind at Hogwarts.
Tom greeted the three of them with unrestrained delight, giving each a great, crushing hug.
Gentle, lovely Goldberry brought out plates of fruit and nut‑cakes for them.
These fruits and nuts had grown from the Huorns themselves and were far sweeter and richer than any ordinary produce. After eating, one felt one's strength and spirits swell.
The three guests ate and drank as they talked of many places in Middle‑earth.
Tom cared nothing for the quarrels and wars of the world. His curiosity was for living things alone. From Kael and Gandalf, he listened with interest to tales of strange flowers and trees, of mountains and rivers they had seen.
Frodo, who knew little of such matters, sat quietly by, slowly eating Goldberry's nut‑cakes and listening without interrupting.
At last, Gandalf spoke of the purpose of their visit.
Tom Bombadil's face lit with sudden joy. He leapt to his feet as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, capering about the room.
"Wonderful!" he cried. "At last, you have come to take that troublesome thing away!"
He hurried into a small storeroom piled high with odds and ends and began rummaging.
Kael and the others followed, watching curiously.
Tom dragged out a large wooden chest, thick with dust, from the bottom of the heap.
He lifted the lid to reveal a smaller wooden box inside.
Beneath that, when he opened it, lay a still smaller casket of silver, like a set of nesting dolls.
Taking the silver box in his hands, Tom went back to the sitting room. He set it down on the table with obvious distaste and grumbled, "That ring never stops muttering its nonsense, buzzing in my head until it aches. These last few years, the voice has only grown louder. Even my horses and cows are on edge because of it."
"It even tried to slip away from me. It whispered to a rat once and had it try to steal it. I caught the little thief and shut the thing in this box. Only then did it quieten a bit."
He tapped the silver lid lightly with one finger, and it sprang open.
"If you had not come soon," he went on, "I was thinking of throwing it out altogether. Because of it, the small folk of the forest will not come here to play, and my horses and cows have all grown thin."
As the lid came up, the One Ring lay revealed in the box.
At the same time, a powerful, seductive presence poured out of it.
In an instant, Kael felt its lure coil around his mind. A voice seemed to whisper that if he took the Ring, he would gain power like Sauron's own—that he could shatter the chains on his soul, ascend to the rank of the Maiar, and claim true immortality.
Reason and desire tore at one another. Something in him clamoured to reach out, to seize the Ring from the box and claim it for himself.
Just as he was about to lift his hand, a sharp pain stabbed through his mind.
Clarity flashed in his eyes. For one stark moment, his reason drove the hunger back. His face changed, and he stepped back on pure instinct even as he forced his Occlumency into motion.
Within his thoughts, a great fortress rose, solid and unyielding, blocking the assault from without and cutting off the Ring's whisper, freeing him from its pull.
After decades of work, Kael's Occlumency had become something very different from what it had once been. In the realm of his mind stood an impregnable castle, as intricate and winding within as Hogwarts itself.
It bristled with mental traps, false memories, and pits of darkness where recollections disappeared, so that no invader could ever find his true memories or the core of his soul, let alone corrupt them and turn him into a puppet.
As his Occlumency flared fully to life, the mental castle became an unbreakable bastion, and the Ring's influence slipped away from him like water off stone.
He had never slackened in his training. For decades, he had studied Occlumency and driven it to new heights for this very purpose: to stand against Sauron's assaults on the mind.
For Sauron's greatest gift was his power to corrupt the spirit, to drag even the mighty into ruin, twist them and make them his thralls.
While Kael was throwing off the Ring's temptation, Gandalf relied on his own formidable will to withstand its call.
Even so, his body remained taut as a drawn bow, and he glared at the Ring as if facing a deadly foe.
Its lure was far stronger than in years past. Even without touching it, they were caught in its net.
He had thought himself prepared, but feeling that power for himself made his heart grow heavy.
He turned at once to check on Frodo and Kael.
To his surprise, Kael's eyes were clear. He only frowned at the Ring, as though merely wary, not enthralled.
"Kael, are you all right?" Gandalf asked.
Kael shook his head lightly. "Do not worry, Gandalf. My Occlumency is sound. As long as I do not touch it, it cannot reach me."
Gandalf let out a slow breath.
He trusted Kael. Over these past decades, he had felt for himself how swiftly the younger wizard's strength had grown, rising into the same rarefied heights as the greatest powers in Middle‑earth.
Through long meditation, his spirit and soul had also grown steadily stronger. If ever his heart reached perfect balance and his soul full wholeness, he might yet break the shackles that bound it and rise to the level of the Maiar.
That step, however, was a hard one indeed. Until now, only a very few had ever managed such a transformation: Eärendil, Glorfindel, and the like.
Eärendil had passed through countless trials and borne a Silmaril into the sky in the wars of the First Age against Morgoth, becoming the Star of Hope, the Star of Eärendil.
Glorfindel had fallen in battle, dragging a Balrog down with him, and by the grace of the Valar had been sent back, his power raised to equal that of the Maiar.
Even Galadriel, for all her might and the Elven Ring Nenya on her hand, had not stepped onto that same height.
Such was the measure of how difficult it was to become as the Maiar.
They were lesser gods, beneath the Valar yet still of divine rank. To reach that state was little different from attempting to climb into heaven.
Drawing his thoughts back to the present, Gandalf turned his eyes to Frodo.
The Hobbit had not escaped untouched. The Ring's call had brushed him too, but as a Halfling he withstood it far better than any other race. After a brief, dazed moment, he shook himself free, backing away in alarm and trying to put distance between himself and the box.
Seeing this, Gandalf's expression eased into quiet satisfaction.
Hobbits truly were a strange people: small, ordinary and easily overlooked, yet able to resist a power that even the Maiar themselves could not wholly withstand.